SensEye - Multi-Tier, Multi-Modal Camera Sensor Network

Overview

The relentless pace of technological growth has led to the emergence
of a variety of sensors and networked sensor platforms. Today,
networked sensors span the spectrum of cost, form-factor, resolution,
and functionality. As an example, consider camera sensors, where
available products range from expensive pan-tilt-zoom cameras to
high-resolution digital cameras, and from inexpensive web-cams and
``cell-phone-class'' cameras to tiny cameras such as Cyclops. A
similar set of options are becoming available for sensor platforms,
with choices ranging from embedded PCs to PDA-class Stargates , and
from low-power Motes to even lower power systems-on-a-chip.

Multi-tier multi-modal networks (henceforth, M^2 networks)
provide an interesting balance of cost, coverage, functionality, and
reliability. For instance, the lower tier of such a system can employ
cheap, untethered elements that can provide dense coverage with low
reliability. However, reliability concerns can be mitigated by
seeding such a network with a few expensive, more reliable sensors at
a higher tier to compensate for the variability in the lower
tier. Similarly, a mix of low-fidelity, low-cost sensors and
high-fidelity high-cost sensor can be used to achieve a balance
between cost and functionality. Application performance can also be
improved by exploiting alternate sensing modalities that may reduce
energy requirements without sacrificing system reliability.

Papers

Purushottam Kulkarni, Deepak Ganesan and Prashant Shenoy, The Case for Multi-tier Camera Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), 2005